Funded CLA Proposal for Fall Premodern Conference
CLA CONFERENCE FUNDING GRANT APPLICATION
February 22, 2008
Submitted on behalf of the Pre-Modern Studies Colloquium by:
Kathleen Biddick (History) and Shannon Miller (English)
Contact: Kathleen.Biddick@temple.edu
Proposed Conference Title:
Premodern Sovereignty and the Discourses of Political Theology and Biopolitics
Amount Requested: $4,400.
Co-Sponsor Contributions (agreed to match $200.00 for successful proposal)
Center for Afro-Jewish Studies
English
Religion
Pending Co-Sponsor
History
Pre-Modern Studies Colloquium website:
http://www.temple.edu/humanities/premodern
Scholarly Accomplishments
Pre-Modern Studies Colloquium (Fall 2005-Spring 2008)
First organized in Fall Semester 2005, by Professors Kathleen Biddick (History) and Shannon Miller (English) in collaboration with Richard Immerman (Director of the Center of the Humanities) The Pre-Modern Studies Colloquium has gone from strength to strength, since our last successful application for CLA funding submitted in Fall 2006.
The Pre-Modern Studies Colloquium is succeeding in its aim to encourage the development and flourishing of pre-modern studies at Temple in the areas of scholarship, in tenure-track hiring, in undergraduate and graduate offerings, and in the development of undergraduate research opportunities. As we achieve our goals we are also deepening Temple’s visibility in regional consortia and laying the groundwork for membership in regional research institutions, such as the Folger Institute, Washington DC.
Our accomplishments include the following:
- Our current membership is composed of over 30 faculty and 16 graduate students,representing three colleges and seven departments
- Our new website (http://www.temple.edu/humanities/premodern), launched in February 2008, posts our current scholarly events, archives our past symposia and lectures, lists the faculty and graduate students who are members of the Colloquium and provides our uses with convenient links to regional consortia and important reference sites.
- Our CLA sponsored symposium, The Erotics of Sovereignty (for the complete program consult our website), held on September 4, 2007 was introduced by Dean Teresa Scott Soufas and included two keynote speakers, and presentations by Temple faculty and graduate students. The symposium attracted colleagues from University of Pennsylvania, St. John’s University, Princeton, and Villanova, as well as an excellent turnout among Temple faculty and graduate students.
- Our activities for Spring 2008 include a dissertation workshop in which graduate students will present their doctoral scholarship and a CHAT reading group devoted to reading Mystifying the Monarch: Studies in Discourse, Power, History (2006).
- Exploration with Communication and Development to feature an article on Pre-Modern Studies at Temple in the CLA publication Compass in order to lay the groundwork for finding a donor who would fund an annual Pre-Modern Symposium
Proposed Project: Fall 2008 Symposium
Pre-Modern Studies is applying for a CLA Conference grant in order to fund our second annual Fall Symposium as we work with CLA Communication and Development to find a donor to support this annual event.
Because the topic of sovereignty has struck such a common research chord among our Temple membership and because of its topicality in contemporary debates in the Humanities, our proposal for Fall 2008 deepens our scholarly exploration of sovereignty begun in Fall 2007. Our proposal combines our topical interest in power and sovereignty with our strong emphasis on post-colonial Pre-Modern Studies.
Premodern Sovereignty and the Discourses of Political Theology and Biopolitics
The Problem:
Historians, most notably Michel Foucault, have argued that pre-modern notions of sovereignty rooted in political theology have been superseded by modern biopower. The premodern sovereign, endowed with a double body, one human and mortal, the other theological and eternal, had the right to make live and let die and to name the enemy. In contrast, biopower, as a sign of the modern, rules over whom to make die and let live.
It is now widely recognized that, contrary to expectations, political theologies have not disappeared with modernity (for example, Political Theologies: Public Religion in Post-Secular Worlds, ed. by Hent de Vries and Lawrence E. Sullivan, 2006). Foucault’s own periodization of political theology as a modality of pre-modern sovereignty and biopower, taken as a sign of modern power, is now regarded not only as too rigid, but also premature. If for a moment, for the sake of argument, we imagine that political-theology and bio-power co-exist, then the question becomes— what unrationalized sovereign relations does such co-existence enable, more specifically, how is sovereignty a mode of temporalization that defies any simple periodization into pre-modern and modern? And what does sovereignty as a mode of temporalization have to do with a Christian project in the West (then and now).
Critical Framework of the Proposed Conference
Our proposed conference first addresses the question of sovereignty and the challenge of thinking sovereignty as a mode of temporalization (and not as periodization) in the opening keynote paper by Professor Kathleen Davis (English, Princeton): Sovereignty and Temporality.
A panel next explores how biopower and political theology are constitutive of each other in two medieval case studies. Professor Kathleen Biddick (History-Temple) traces how the new modes of sovereign temporalization invented in the twelfth-century by the English royal bureaucracy (and borrowed from Normanno-Muslim administrative techniques in Sicily) served as the constitutive means for the fabrication of King Arthur’s two bodies in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. These same bureaucratic practices were used as weapon against Jews resident in 12th century Britain, when the sovereign named them as the enemy. Professor Adam Miyashiro (English-Temple) explores the paradox of how the sovereign capacity to make die and let live was turned against the body of King Edward II, a sovereign murdered on account of sodomitical practices, and whose deposition is a challenge not only to kingship, but to the sovereign exception itself.
The concluding key note address, The Political Theology of Colonialism: Creature Caliban, by Professor Julia Lupton (Comparative Literature-U.C. Irvine) analyzes how Caliban, the monstrous creature (located in colonial space between Bermuda, Algiers, Milan and Naples) from Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, is constructed out of the political-theological category of the creaturely and how as a creature he is reduced to bare life in the play.
Our project intends to bring into view a deeper history of sovereignty in order to historicize the critical terms of this contemporary debate. We argue that a return to the historical fabrication of sovereignty in the period from 1100-1700 is crucial. During this pre-modern period, forms of colonialism, religious and racial conflict, technology and law shaped the sovereign imaginary. Our symposium plans to explore this deeper history of sovereignty in its literary, philosophical, and artistic modes in order to achieve an understanding of how earlier forms of sovereignty haunt volatile forms of contemporary (allegedly secular) criticism.
The Format
The format of our program in Fall 2007 was so successful at facilitating scholarly dialogue that we propose to follow it for the proposed symposium to be held Friday, September 5, 2008.
PROGRAM SCHEDULE-10th floor Gladfelter Hall-Friday, September 5, 2008
12:00-12:45 box lunch -CHAT Lounge
12:45-1:00 Dean Teresa Scott Soufas, College of Liberal Arts
Opening Remarks
1:00-2:00
Kathleen Davis (Princeton University)
Sovereignty and Temporality
Moderator: Shannon Miller (English-Temple)
2:00-400
Kathleen Biddick (History-Temple)
Arthur’s Two Bodies and the Bare Life of the Sovereign Archive
Adam Miyashiro (English-Temple)
Edward II’s Bare Life
Moderator: Vasiliki Limberis (Religion-Temple)
4:00-4:30 Coffee Break
4:30-5:30
Julia Lupton (Comparative Literature-UC-Irvine)
A Political Theology of Colonialism: Creature Caliban
Moderator: Lewis Gordon (Center for Afro-Jewish Studies-Temple)
5:45-6:45 Reception CHAT lounge
7:30 Symposium Restaurant Meal
Short Scholarly Biography of the Invited Speakers
Kathleen Davis, English, Princeton University
Kathleen Davis received her doctorate from Rutgers University. She is widely known for her publications on post-colonial medieval studies. Her new book, Sovereignty and Periodization appears in April 2008 with the University of Pennsylvania Press. Other publications include: “Sovereign subjects, feudal law, and the writing of history,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 36 (2006): 223-61; “Time Behind the Veil: the media, the Middle Ages, and orientalism now,” in Post-Colonial Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey
Jerome Cohen, 2004).
Julia Reinhard Lupton, Professor of Comparative Literature, UC Irvine
Julia Lupton holds degrees from Johns Hopkins University and Yale University, Her books include After Oedipus: Shakespeare in Psychoanalysis (Cornell University Press, 1993); Afterlives of the Saints: Hagiography, Typology, and Renaissance Literature (Stanford University Press, 1996); Citizen-Saints: Shakespeare and Political Theology (University of Chicago Press, 2005). She is interested how the protocols of medieval biblical exegesis haunt Renaissance literature. In her most recent book she uses key works by Shakespeare to examine the aims, limits, and legacies of classical and modern citizenship in Western literature. Lupton is also well-known for founding HOT (Humanities Out There), a partnership that links UC Irvine with neighboring Latino communities. In 2003 HOT received a 3-year NEH grant. Lupton also serves on the National Advisory Board of Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life, a coalition of programs committed to public scholarship in its many dimensions.
BUDGET
Round-Trip Travel for Lupton and Davis
$800.
Lodging for Lupton and Davis (total of 4 nights)
$800.
Symposium Lunch
$300.
Symposium Coffee Break and Reception
$300.
Symposium Restaurant Meal for 6
$400
Two Honoraria
(NB: These are distinguished senior professors and the honorarium needs to be at current market rates)
$1400.
Miscellaneous
Posters, other publicity
$400.
TOTAL: $4,400.
